Overview of the Pancam Pantograph Inspection System

Pancam uses two digital cameras. The ‘side’ view camera captures a
profile of the pantograph against a white backboard. The profile is analysed to
detect damage and step wear patterns, and to measure the depth of carbon block
wear. The ‘top’ view is used to detect damaged and bent pantograph
horns.

Overview of the Pancam system.

Pancam uses optical sensors to detect when the pantograph is in position. A
signal is passed to an industrial PC which captures the image data from the
cameras. AVI tag readers are used to identify the locomotive. The Pancam PC
matches the tag data to the corresponding image data, analyses the images and
reports the analysis results to a database using standard network technologies.
The Pancam software is multithreaded so that images can be captured promptly
and then processed in the available time between locomotives.